What do I wear?

Here we are at that silly time of the year again when it is impossible to know what to wear. Fall is wonderful, but for the ‘not so-fashion-conscious woman’, it presents untold problems. While men only worry about “when is the next game?”, women worry about whether to wear a sweater or a blouse.

Granted there are much bigger problems in the world, but it is the nagging little day-to-day decisions that can make us crazy.

"I wore a sweater to work this morning and now I'm sweltering," said one lady where I work while she fanned herself with the papers she was reading on the Subway.

I know the feeling. Mornings are cool, so the turtleneck sweater seems perfectly fine, but later in the day, you wonder what in the world you were thinking and whether you were fully awake when you dressed this morning.

So, you try to find clothes that are "in between", neither hot nor cold. The little fall tees don't seem warm enough and the snug sweaters are pushed to the back of the closet. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have many in between clothes; they are all either summer or winter.

"Layer" advised one of my sensible friends.

So, I pile on the clothes until my arms cannot bend and I am barely able to walk. Then I spend the day taking off garment after garment as the temperature goes higher during the day. By the end of the day, I need a wheelbarrow to carry my clothes home. I am just not the layering kind of person. I want to get dressed once.

The heat situation in the Subway doesn't help much either. Too many people, very little space to breathe, they never seem to get the temperature quite right. And about the time when we walk out of the subway, what happens? You guessed it. It becomes cold again and we shiver and curse the weatherman while waiting to run into the comfort of a warm building. The way the sun hits the windows of the building seems to make temperatures vary a lot as well. Mornings are shady and cool, afternoons sunny and hot.

Meanwhile, we still have the original problem of what in the world to wear without looking like a rag woman or a teddy bear.

I think I have finally figured it out, more or less. Medium weight pants, neither my light summer ones with the stripes, nor the thick ones like my corduroy favorites. Let's see, that leaves about three pairs that I can rotate. Then there are the shirts with long sleeves that seem to work pretty well. Top it off with a cardigan sweater and I can pass until the sun starts doing its thing with the windows.

Coats are impossible. While it is cold enough for a coat in the morning, I find myself carrying it on my arm in the afternoon. Time to dig out those fleece jackets and "all weather" coats. All weather? Now that's a term invented by the fashion industry, well aware of the changing seasons. Nothing is "all weather." I think it means that it will shed water as long as it isn't pouring rain and will cut the wind, but not actually keep you warm.

Anyhow, by the time I get this between seasons thing all figured out, I’ll hopefully know what to wear for today.

Goo Goo Dolls (Something for the rest of us - Album Review)

Published by Sunday Guardian (October,2010)

Bobby McFerrin (Vocabularies - Album Review)

Published by Sunday Guardian (August,2010)

The Laws of work: What your boss never told you!

It occurred to me the other day when the computer was down, the phone was ringing off the hook, and the deadlines were whooshing past me that there must be unseen forces governing offices and creating laws of probability to make us crazy!  Won't it be a easier if we just knew what these laws were? My experience over the years has taught me that the following rules apply to all kinds of work and to just about everyone who wants to succeed at work:

1.If your day is going well, don’t check your email: It's true

2.The better you do your work, the more work you will be given to do: It's true

3.Nothing can ever be done in the amount of time allotted to do it. It's true

4.Time management is another of the tasks that you don’t have time to complete.It's true

5.The closer the deadline gets, the more complicated the project becomes.It's true

6.If you suggest a good idea, you will be put in charge of implementing it.It's true

7.Your report is never so good that it can’t be improved, or so long that it can’t be longer.It's true

8.Computers will only calculate the information you give them.It's true

9.A four-day week with a holiday is longer than a five-day week. It's true

10.If you take a day off,  work will multiply until you get back.It's true

11.The right decision and the wrong decision are both better than indecision.It's true

12.There is nothing more satisfying than a job well done; except one assigned to someone else.It's true

13.Meetings are a waste of time - but an approved and essential waste of time.It's true

14.When everyone understands a policy, it’s time to change it.It's true

15.The more details in directions, the greater the likelihood they will not be understood.It's true

16.If someone sends email to keep from calling, they will call to see if the email was received.It's true

17.An error is never noticed until after the email is sent.It's true

18.Technology will always create as many problems as it solves.It's true

19.A stapler always jams and runs out of staples at the same time.It's true

20.When everyone understand the new computer software, it will be upgraded.It's true

21.Nothing gets done as fast as it does on the day before going on vacation.It's true

22.The telephone will always ring when you are totally absorbed with something else.It's true

23.The primary function of office workers is to ensure that paperwork is never completed.It's true

24.The easy jobs always end up taking more time than the difficult ones.It's true

25.After everything is done, we will still worry about whether we’ve done everything.It's true

26.The computers worked better before they were upgraded.It's true

27.Never say anything in an email that you do not want forwarded all over the office.It's true

28.The more important an email, the greater the probability that it will not go through.It's true

29.No matter how busy someone is, they always take time for lunch and smoke breaks.It's true

30.Problems always develop at the end of the day, never at the beginning.It's true

31.The day you have evening appointments will always be the day you can’t get out of work on time.It's true

32.Projects are never cancelled until they are nearly completed.It's true

33.If you misplace it, you will need it; if you find it, you will forget what you needed it for.It's true

34.If it’s been a great week, something important didn’t get done.It's true

35.When all else fails, remember you can fix any machine by turning it off.It's true

36.If you wait until the last minute to print, the printer will always jam or run out of paper.It's true

37.Documents always make more sense before being revised than afterwards.It's true

Helpless self help books!

I was reading a magazine in the airport the other day and noticed some suggestions for self-improvement. While these suggestions were good, as far as they went, they just didn’t seem to quite cover all the alternatives for me.

Eat light and read something inspirational. (“Why not read something light, like a Dilbert cartoon, and eat something inspirational like a chocolate?”)

Be organized and make a to-do list.(“ If it is worth doing, I somehow feel I should just do it instead of spending my time making lists”)

Count your blessings.(“ If you can’t think of any good ones, is it okay to count troubles? Or maybe I could just count sheep and go back to sleep?”)

Get advice from others. (“If anyone has trouble with this one, my aunts, uncles, neighbours, colleagues would be glad to help.”)

Think of something you would like to stop doing. (“I just have a feeling that quitting my job is not an option here.”)

Be creative.(“ But not while driving in rush hour traffic! There are times to be creative and times to conform.”)

Exercise. (“I suppose watching an aerobic video on youtube does not count, regardless of how much it wears me out.”)

Write down negative thoughts and then tear up the paper. (“Well, there goes next blogpost!”)

Visualize yourself the way you want to be. (“ You’ll still be old and fat; you just won’t have to admit it to yourself.”)

Don’t give up. (“Yes, if you sit in traffic long enough, eventually you’ll get home - unless you run out of gas first, that is.”)

Reward yourself for saving money by getting something you really want.(“ But what I really want is to spend the money instead of saving it.”)

Plan a vacation to have something to look forward to. ( “I get no time for vacation and looking forward to 5 p.m. is good enough for me.”)

Just as I suspected, it’s totally hopeless. But think of the money I’ve saved by staying just the way I am. Maybe I could use it on something I really need, like more self-help books, for better ideas!

Bored.

Remember when it was actually possible to spend a boring afternoon? We were forced to find creative ways to entertain ourselves, things like reading books, listening to music or just daydreaming. Not anymore.

Could it be that we have become so overly stimulated that nothing truly entertains us anymore?

We cannot stand to be bored long enough to dream or think creatively. We rush to push the panic buttons before boredom sets in. Nowadays, people seem to believe that there is an inalienable right to NOT be bored. We have television, radio, computers, video, tapes, CD's, movies, cell phones, digital cams, and DVD. Heaven forbid that anyone should ever spend any time being bored.

Somehow, our gadgets are not quite as entertaining as they used to be though. Hundreds of channels but we still we can't find anything on television worth watching. Thousands of websites, but we surf aimlessly from one site to another. We have also become multi-taskers, eating, watching TV, working on the computer, and talking on the cell phone all at the same time. The more stimulation we have, the more we seem to need. It keeps us from being bored.

Could it be that we have become so overly stimulated that nothing truly entertains us anymore? We are always looking for something better, something more interesting, something more exciting - something less boring. There is too much to see, too much to do, too much to entertain us, too much competition for our time and attention. There is no time to watch a sunset, go for a walk, feed the birds, or rediscover the thoughts, meditations and dreams of our own mind. That's BORING!

We are filled with the voices, thoughts and words of other people, with values different from our own. The more we absorb, the more alike we all become, and the blander, more uniform and more boring life becomes. Soon nothing will be stimulating enough to keep boredom away. We will sit among our electronic gadgets, surfing from channel to channel on the television, pushing button after button on the remote control, clicking from site to site on the computer, reading email after email as we look for a something we've not seen or heard a hundred times before. In fact sometimes we don’t even wait for a song to finish.

Strange our how our minds never died from boredom in the past. Is it really so likely that they will now? Nothing is entertaining enough. Nothing is worth our time. We seek more and more of the very thing that is causing our demise. We are stuck in information overload. Perhaps it is time sit back and just do nothing for a while. Perhaps we need to take a little time to clear our minds and just be bored. Maybe, just maybe, a little old-fashioned boredom is not such a bad thing.

Single Suroshree walks into a bar!

After a certain point in a single woman’s life, a conversation involving the woman and her mother, only involves two things. 1. Your plans on settling down and 2. Your plans on settling down.  Naturally, you get terribly exhausted of buying time for yourself and you realise that before you can settle the question to settle down , you need someone to settle down with. Since, sitting at home and waiting for prince charming hasn’t brought you much luck, you decide to wear your hunting boots, dress to kill your next prey and set out on a little mission impossible your own.

 But hunting isn’t easy, mostly because you don’t know where to hunt. It is then that I began to wonder just where it was that all the eligible bachelors hang out. I tried spending as much time as possible at hardware stores. That seems like a "male place," and the advice books all said that I must attempt to create “social opportunities.” However, I could only lurk around the nuts, bolts and screws for so long until I began to be suspected of shoplifting.

Finally, I came up with a bright idea. Guys go to bars to meet women. After trying everything else without much success, curiosity won. I took the low road and decided it was time to hit the bars. By now, I had developed some poise in meeting people, not to mention my hardware expertise, and I felt pretty confident that I could handle most situations.

Now some women tell me they have fun going to bars, meet interesting men, and have tons of fun. I wish I could find that bar! Whenever I go into a bar, I seem to magnetically attract the attention of every creep and/or a wannabe songwriter in the joint. I don't know if they have radar or if I have “fresh meat” written all over me.

Before my eyes can even adjust to the dim light, I am approached by an overdressed rapper-wannabe look-alike, complete with his bling. “Wanna dance?”  Well,I came to meet ‘new’ men and unless I actually ‘met’ them, I wouldn’t ever find the perfect guy, right? Besides, why refuse and hurt someone's feelings? So, I agree and we go to the dance floor. All the decent looking sorts in these places are invariably busy with other women. Rapper, it seems, comes here often and knows all the ropes. He glides too smoothly to the music and dances way too close.

After the dance, I excuse myself and hide in the ladies rest room for a while to regain my composure, then decide to venture out and look for a table in a dark corner where Rapper can't find me. Trouble is while I am losing Rapper, there’s a ‘Rockstar’ who spots me and start to move in.

“Can I buy you a drink, babe?”

I'm not a “babe,” but why argue? He wouldn't understand anyhow.

“Well, actually, I've already ordered one.”

Rockstar is unfazed, sits down at my table without an invitation and begins to tell me the story of his life, all about what a lousy bitch his last girlfriend was and he’s so done with all the casual relationships and is looking for a ‘meaningful. Of course, in about five minutes of conversation, it is possible to see why he has been dumped so many times. He's a loser. My interest strays.

The bar is smoky, hot and stifling. The music is too loud, the drinks too strong. Is this what I have to do to meet someone, I wonder? Maybe I'd rather be lonely! But, I've already paid a cover charge, so I stay. I smile, I dance and I listen to all the ‘rockstars’ and all the stories and hear about all the disappointments, the failures, and the lost loves.

After a drink or two, Rapper begins to look a lot more pleasant and maybe it is not such a bad place after all. I think I’m being too particular, too critical. Maybe I could actually date one of these guys – if it were just not for the cologne! The smell of Axe Effect is overwhelming. Does that stuff come in huge tanks?

If I could meet just one decent man with a scent from the men's section of a good department store instead of the special from the local ‘kinara store’, I'd be his!

After a couple of “hunting expeditions” to the bar, the stories and guys all start to blend together like a Nickelback song. I try to sort them into categories that my mind can comprehend: jerks, losers, and assholes. So many ruined lives, so many lost dreams - so many unemployed men!

The men who are half-way decent are usually married - but separated, at least for the night. Eventually, I realise that it's easy to meet someone here; but difficult to meet the type of person I want to meet.

Eventually, I take the back exit and leave. My mother will be so disappointed again. Now on to my next hunting expedition.

Fresh air never smelled so good!